Adventures and not so exciting times in the life of Kole Hicks

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Category Archives: Kenshi

It’s been a little while since the last update, but hopefully this one will sate your musical appetite! I’ve been working on a video series that documents my entire game music creation process (from Inspiration to Implementation) & just finished the first video on the music of Kenshi’s Swamplands. You can check it out at the link below!

*Sounds for Doors/Gates finally! Although I still need to create some for prison cells/cages.

*All Audio will slightly change depending on the game speed you’ve chosen to play at (Normal, x2, x4). Just create a new “aural atmosphere” & not to change gameplay in any way.

As a side note, I just went to a fantastic concert featuring a group that I hope to hire for Kenshi’s next music session (not 100% confirmed). http://onensemble.org If you’re in Southern California I highly recommend checking them out; super powerful taiko drums & emotional music!

Since the initial HUGE Audio update in Alpha .50, it may seem like there have only been minor additions to the Audio, but that would be quite far from the truth. It’s definitely more dramatic going from absolutely no sound to a lot of music Music with some SFX, but I’d say between that time & now I’ve created (and will hopefully have integrated in the near future) 100 if not 200 various SFX.

So, along with all of the fantastic progress in this latest update (Females, Cannibals, etc.) we have an equally large Audio update. I won’t list off all of the things that’ve been added, but here are some of the main sounds I tackled…

*Tons of Inventory item sounds – Everything from a bottle of rum to a bag of potatoes or even robotic components

*Audio for Building/Construction – This covers everything from UI sounds when you click on various building options to actual sounds when placing the buildings in-game. Some even have audio attached to them when placed in-game. (Not all though, as some need to be synced to animations when they’re finalized)

*Impact sounds for Training Dummies! Because these dummies shouldn’t be spurting blood when you hit them… well, unless you’re one of those types who like to tie bandits to posts & use ‘em as target practice

*And Much more…

Oh yes & before I forget, this will be my final beard update! January 1st 2014 it’ll all be shaved off. It’s been pretty fantastic hearing the reactions from everyone over my beard and I’ll miss stroking it measuredly while deep in thought, but its time has come. So before it departs, here is one last picture…

Happy Halloween! My beard has filled in pretty nicely as of late, so I’ll be using it in the costumes I’m planning… Viking, Mountain Man, etc. I’ll try to remember to take a few pictures & update the blog with beard progress.

As for Kenshi, I’ve been working hard to provide another big update. This time I’ve been tackling the realm of UI (User Interface) sounds. I haven’t counted it all yet, but the total # is somewhere between 80 – 100 new sounds. This covers everything from General Clicks/Pops, to Inventory management, & cycling through various Tabs/Options. Needless to say there are a lot of things to click on in Kenshi & now there will be a lot of different sounds associated with those clicks.

I’ve also been tweaking the levels of all the audio & made a few revisions to sounds I was unhappy with before. The Plate armor never sounded “right” to me in-game, so I’ve iterated a bit & created some sounds that work much better. Now a group approaching in Plate will sound even more intimidating than the same group in another set of armor.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I mentioned the “Alarm” idea (that many of you suggested) to Chris & he agreed that it was a good idea. It needs to be coded first, but hopefully it’ll make its way in to a future build.

As of late I’ve been busy creating and implementing a large chunk of SFX into Wwise so they may be plugged into Kenshi. Everything from footsteps, to combat sounds, and even general UI “clicks”… I like to think it’s a general/broad sweep of the SFX needed for the game.

However, in my spare time I’ve created two videos detailing the thought process and ideas behind Kenshi’s music system. The first demonstrates quite a few examples (captured in-game) & the 2nd (to be shared at a later time) is much longer, but goes into a lot more detail. If you’d like to watch the first video, feel free to check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKVHOf8Zpg

Some important bullet points about Kenshi’s Music System:

*”Musical Indifference” – The world doesn’t care if you live or die & the music is a direct representation of the world. It’ll never react to your actions in-game.

*The System consists of 3 different layers. Bed, Frame, & Canopy. You can think of it like this… Bed is the foundational layer, Frame is the stuff in the middle, & Canopy is the melody up top (although there are of course exceptions to this generalized description).

*The System creates its own soundtrack. All of the musical parts are randomly chosen by the system to help build various musical tracks. Sometimes it features 1 layer, while other times all 3 shall play simultaneously. I’ve simply given it musical excerpts to use & basic instructions on the overall tempo.

Thanks for reading, I’ll post again as soon as the other video is ready & hope you enjoy the current one!

Last post was all about our first session in the studio (which was a lot of fun!) & we now have around 40 minutes of music in Kenshi. I’ll make sure to create a video demonstrating our Music System in the near future

Now it’s time to talk about SFX though. A quick Q & A…

What SFX will you be tackling first?

The first priority is to knock out all of the basic character sounds. So this means footsteps for different surfaces, the armor the character is wearing, and a good chunk of the necessary combat sounds. Attacks, Impacts, etc.

What is the plan for future SFX?

First and foremost we want to get all of the 1st priority SFX working as intended, as there are many complex layers involved. After that, I’ll probably start to focus on non-character specific sounds… perhaps ambient sounds or maybe crafting/building.

What SFX will be released in the next update?

That depends on a few different factors & I’m not sure what will make its way into the next update, but there will most definitely be audio! I would expect the first priority SFX to be ready by then.

Hello everyone! Big news in the Audio world of Kenshi. Last Wednesday (the 14th) I had a wonderful studio session with some phenomenally talented musicians. We recorded a large chunk of music for the game and we’re making very big strides to make sure it’s working properly in-game. Some info about the people involved…

Jeness – A fantastically gifted Cellist who I’ve had the pleasure of working with before & hopefully will continue working with in the future! She can take a simple melody & make it soar; truly a musician who fills her performances with sincere emotion.

June Kuramoto – A brilliant Koto player and a founder of the legendary Jazz fusion band “Hiroshima”! Full of experience and passion, June is a pleasure to work with.

Les Brockmann – Les is an amazing Recording, Mixing, and Mastering Engineer who I’ve had the pleasure of working with before. His credits range from Scooby Doo, Home Improvement, and Seventh Heaven to the wildly successful Uncharted series and cult favorite, Firefly.

Enough with all the introductions though, it’s time to show some stuff off! We took quite a few pictures & captured a lot of video from the session, so without further ado here is a compilation video of our first session (with a sneak peek of the Kenshi “Main Title” piece!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFYbxgBY650

Last but not least here is a solid picture of my beard’s progress (or lack thereof) =D